PurposeThis paper explores some management concepts and how applying these concepts from business to higher education can be problematic, let alone incompatible, particularly in relation to measuring quality in higher education.Design/methodology/approachIt provides a conceptual understanding of the literature on quality in the higher education context. It does so by examining the literature on students as customers, customer expectations, customer satisfaction and other management theories that have been applied to higher education.FindingsIt argues that the current bases for perceiving quality such as meeting customer expectations, satisfying the customer, ensuring quality control, meeting standards and assessing the cost associated with poor quality are in disagreement with the principal aims and measures of quality in higher education.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper can certainly benefit from many other concepts in business that have been applied in higher education, which it lacks. It only focussed on a number of key and popular ideas in management theory that have been used in higher education more broadly.Practical implicationsStudent-focussed quality initiatives can be devoid of the student as customer concept. How programs, subjects and experiences are curated can be solely for the purpose of continuous improvement. Second, universities that choose to treat the student as a customer may find it beneficial to apply a relationship marketing approach to higher education. Lastly, those against the student as customer concept may focus on the long-term impact of quality initiatives such as promoting lifelong learning, building long-term relationships with alumni and employers and those that further promote academic integrity.Originality/valueSome considerations have been offered. These considerations revisit the basic notions of teaching and learning in higher education. It puts an emphasis on sidestepping the student as customer metaphor, that learning is not expressed in dollar terms, and that the quality of the student experience cannot be measured by student evaluation alone because it is felt much later in life.

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This study investigates all available literature related to critical thinking in business education in a survey of publications in the field produced from 1990-2019. It conducts a thematic analysis of 787 articles found in Web of Science and Google Scholar, including a specific focus on 55 highly-cited articles. The aim is to investigate the importance of critical thinking in business education, how it is conceptualised in business education research, the business contexts in which critical thinking is situated, and the key and more marginal themes related to critical thinking outlined in the business and business education literature. The paper outlines six key areas and topics associated with those areas. It suggests future directions for further scholarly work in the area of critical thinking in business education.

This paper provides a citation network analysis of the publications of Academy of Management Journal from 1958 to 2014 inclusive. This represents the entire history of the journal to date. It analyses the most published authors, most cited articles, most cited authors, top institutions, and the top countries the articles emanate from. 2304 articles containing 114,550 references were taken from Web of Science™ as a source of primary data. 114,550 Analysis was carried out using the Web of Science™ online analytics tool and Excel®. A data visualisation and manipulation software, Gephi™, was used to provide a visual representation of the associated citation networks. Results indicate that the most published authors throughout the journal's history are Ivancevich, Golembiewski and Hambrick. The three most cited authors are Pfeffer, Porter and Thompson. The single most cited article is Pfeffer and Salancik's 1978 article The external control of organizations: a resource dependence perspective. An analysis of keywords revealed 'Performance', 'Organization' and 'Work' as the most important terms in the journal's history. Results from this paper shed light into the evolving concerns of the journal and its readership and provide an alternative form of analysing and visualising large citation data.

This three-year study of research training policy and practice involved government and university executives, and university academics from the Philippines. A total of 53 participants were involved: two officials from the Commission on Higher Education, six directors of research centres, 28 university executives and 17 academic staff. Seven public and 15 private universities across the Philippines were involved. Findings suggest that: (1) there are inadequate facilities and resources dedicated to support staff and student research; (2) there is a lack of specific training to develop staff for research and supervision; (3) the emphasis of supervision is on proofreading and the rewards are unattractive;(4) the range of student support available is less dedicated to research; (5) there is low research quality in both staff and student research; and (6) there is limited research collaboration locally and internationally.